Wooden Chess Board

 Greetings friends,

I try as often as possible to make Christmas gifts for my family rather than buying things, and this year I decided that a great gift for my brother would be a wooden chess board. He has been studying chess more in recent years, and thought he would enjoy having a nice board to play on.

I didn't take any photos of my raw materials, but as you can imagine, I chose the usual maple & walnut combo for the white and black (brown) squares on the board. I cut them to the standard USCF width of 2.25" and glued them all together. When dry, I cut 2.25" strips from the striped board and alternated layers on the next glue-up to achieve the checkered pattern.

   

At this stage, I glued on the first border around the edge of the board, a thin strip of walnut. This was just an aesthetic choice to provide some more contrast on the edges. To add some thickness to the board, I used some spare pieces of maple to create a border around the bottom. I figured in addition to adding some heft to the board, this would also protect against any warping should it be subjected to higher or lower humidity.

Nearing completion, I took the board over to my brother-in-law who has a nice drum sander to flatten the top of the board and remove any irregularities. Seeing everything slowly come together was very encouraging! The final steps were to trim the edges fully flush/square and to add the final trim on the outer edge of the board.

Some years ago, I found a beautiful piece of figured maple in a "pay-per-pound" scrap lumber pile, and never did anything with it until now. I cut it into 1/4" strips and mitered the ends to the right length to line up at the corners of the board. This part was by far the most tricky as far as measuring and aligning, but the final product looks really great with no end-grain exposed.

With the assembly complete, I used my orbital sander to sand progressively to 600 grit which left a very smooth surface on the top. I only sanded the bottom to 220 since it's not visible during use and will likely wear much faster than the top anyway. Two coats of boiled linseed oil (BLO) really made the contrast between the maple and walnut pop, and brought out the figuring in the maple strips around the edges! I'm incredibly happy with the end result, and my brother really loved it too.

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year, and stays tuned for whatever I'm up to in 2023!

Thanks for reading,

Juju